After the Lylat Wars
by Alankria
Summary: Complete. 'Let me fall. Let me climb. There's a moment when fear and dream must collide'...'A hero? Heroes aren't supposed to have blood on their paws.' Fox. Wolf. After the Lylat Wars. War is never black and white.
1. One

Disclaimer:  StarFox characters, places and concepts are copyright Nintendo.  The songs lyrics featured are from one of Circe de Soleil's songs.

-

**Let me fall.  Let me climb.  There's a moment when fear and dream must collide.**

The rain is like a wall of icy water, soaking everything it touches.  The old capital city of Katina is deserted, but for me.  The night is dark but I can still remember the lights from the cameras and the awards ceremony… people saying what a hero I am.  

A hero?  Heroes aren't supposed to have blood on their paws.

I look down at the medal in my paw.  It was the highest award that a civilian could receive.  Pepper wants me to join the army.  For what end?  More killing?  I've done enough killing for the next century.  

I turn my eyes to the dark sky.  The clouds and the rain hide the stars.  I grew up in the stars, they're more of a home than any planet.  Stars don't pass judgement, they just watch.  Let you get on with what you're doing.  It's people who have caused every problem.  …People like me.

The Venom soldiers are condemned for being murdering brutes, falling into bloodlust and killing mindlessly.  I suppose those same people ignore the fact that I'm just as much a carnivore as the Venom Lizards, that I'm just as susceptible to bloodlust.  The hero McCloud would never tear out his enemy's throat with his teeth when he ran out of magazines.  No, he'd rather die than do what the Lizards do.  Something like that.  I don't know how they can believe that rubbish.  But they'd never feel bloodlust, I suppose.  They've never been in a situation where your teeth and your nails are all you have left, and when you're against a horde of Lizards with red haze in their eyes you have to fight like them to survive.

Blood tastes metallic.  The stuff is more viscous than water and has that biting edge of metal, and the more of it that filled my mouth the more I wanted it.  I tore at their throats and any other exposed flesh they were careless enough to neglect.  And when I was done, I would feel powerful, whole.  Only the horror I saw on my friends' faces told me that I had done something wrong.  Something that had felt so right.

And now I walk through the buildings and I look up at one in particular.  Someone has draped a shirt over the windowsill, maybe to dry it before the rains came.  The more I look at that forlorn, dripping shirt an image begins to form in my mind of the young man who wore it when I last saw him.

Standing, bleeding for an almost-fatal wound to his left shoulder, staring at me across a wall of flame.  I had seen in his eyes the knowledge that with Andross' body lying dead behind me, he too would be hunted and killed.

**All I ask.  All I need.  Let me open whichever door I might open.**

Condemned to death for a crime which no mercenary considers a crime: taking money from a man because you have killed for that man.  And now I am hunted like the wild animal they call me on the television.

I watched the awards ceremony on my television with its dodgy and slightly illegal sky link.  I watched as Pepper in his red uniform gave awards to McCloud and his friends.  I watched their eyes.

The little one, Slippy Toad, had wide eyes.  He seemed delighted to receive the award but intimidated by the lights, the paparazzi.  Who could blame him?

The old one, the old enemy of Andross, Peppy Hare, was smiling slightly and the smile reached his doe eyes.  He felt pleased and proud.  Proud for himself or proud for Fox?  Probably both.

The tall, enigmatic one, Falco Lombardi, took the award with no expression on his face.  Only a flicker in his eyes showed his discomfort.  He is a mercenary; before he flew for StarFox he flew for Andross a few times; he felt slightly ridiculous receiving an award for doing his job.  

And Fox…

There was nothing in his eyes. 

I puzzle that now.  That complete lack of emotion.  I had expected some pride that he had done the job and that he had finally avenged his father.  But… nothing.

I roll over on my cold bed and look out of the window at the rain.  I am in a ruined city, ruined by the war and now inhabited only by those who, like me, seek to evade the Cornerians.  I will not be safe here long.  I must make plans, contact old allies, arrange for somewhere to lay low for a few years until the Cornerians are bored of me and assume I'm dead.  Maybe I should finally buy a replacement eye, or even have both changed and my fur permanently dyed.  

But instead I lie on the cold bed and watch the rain.  Leon used to say I was resigned to life.  Perhaps now I am resigned to an absence of life.  Maybe even death.  

**Someone I am is waiting for my courage.**

**The one I want, the one I will become will catch me.**

**So let me fall if I must fall.  **


	2. Two

Disclaimer:  StarFox characters, places and concepts are copyright Nintendo.  The songs lyrics featured are from the same  Circe de Soleil song as in the previous chapter.

-

**I will dance so freely.  Holding onto no one.  You can hold me only if you too will fall away from all these useless fears and chains.  **

I glance away from the shirt and move on.  Eventually I find a ginger tabby cat girl, perhaps a year younger than me, set up in the open front of what was once a skyscraper.  Glass panels have been blown away by the war leaving the open space, and inside the girl has built a den of scrap material.  She sees me standing in the rain and beckons me inside.  I gratefully step out of the cold and into the comparatively warm interior, tucking the medal into my pocket.  

She says that her name is Katlana and she is a fallen angel.  Despite the grime she is beautiful enough to be an angel and she has had enough of the alcohol scattered around her to believe that maybe, before the war, when life was good, she was an angel.  She asks my name and I just tell her 'Fox'.  She accepts that and smiles.  

She has a television in one corner, and by some chance it still picks up a slightly hazy satellite picture.  I find it almost unbearable to watch the Cornerian News.  It is full of stories about the rebuilding of the planet and all the plans for rebuilding the Lylat System.  And then there is a story about me.  A reporter is asking Peppy where I am.  He says, without faltering, that I've gone out of the System to deal with some other business and that I am expected back at some point.  I assume he found my note.  I can't remember quite what I wrote, only that it said I needed to leave and that I might be back.  I didn't want them to think I'd killed myself, even though the thought had crossed my mind.  

She offers me a drink of something indistinguishable in a filthy bottle.  Smiling, I take the bottle and sniff.  Whatever it is, it will strip my stomach lining and fry my brain.  For once in my life, since a friend of mine became an alcoholic, I want to be drunk.  I want to forget everything and lose myself in the blissful realm of drunkenness.  It will be the ultimate escapism.  

The first swig burns all the way down.  Katlana grins at me as I can't help but cough.  She swigs from her own bottle, a long swig that only someone who has no lining in the digestive system could handle, and I take another swig.  The stuff is strong, probably left over by the Venomians; I can already feel a gentle humming behind my eyes.

The rain keeps falling as we keep drinking, and after a while I have to lie down because the little den is spinning.  I lie down among crumpled sheets and Katlana lies next to me.  She is less drunk than me; I can barely keep my eyes open but she is focused on me.  She slides her paw under my shirt and runs it over my chest.  The feeling is nice alongside the buzz of the alcohol, so I let her do it.  It's gone dark outside, and my vision is gone; I can only see her leaning over me, pressing her mouth against mine.  The alcohol muddies my sensations and I kiss her back.  Some distant part of me thinks that I never kiss girls, I'm always too shy, but that part is distant and right in front of me is Katlana the fallen angel.  I fumble at her top, manage to slide my paw underneath and feel her small breast.  She's not wearing a bra.  She makes a small purring sound so I continue what I'm doing.  Then she slides her paw down and unzips my trousers.  I'm too mellow, too vacant to give serious thought to what will happen next.  Only that she's hitched her skirt up around her waist, that she's sliding over me.  

What happens next is an indistinct blur of sensation.  When it's over we lie side by side, tugging our clothes back into place; and then she cuddles up to my side and starts crying.  As soon as I feel the wet plop of one of her tears against my arm I realise that I'm crying too.  I curl up with her, my fallen angel, and let the alcohol slide me into sleep.

**There's no reason to miss this one chance, this perfect moment.  **

As night falls and the rain begins to cease I decide to get up.  I glance once out of the window, sparing a glance down at where Katlana the ginger tabby has made her home, and wonder when I should go.  There are a few hangouts for us outcasts, places where we can drink some paint-stripper and play with manky cards.  The alcohol burns and the memory of what it did to my mother has so far kept me from falling into its seductive embrace; the cards are entertaining for as long as it takes for the first nose to be broken.  No, I will consign myself to wandering the streets, musing.  

I pull the drenched shirt in from the windowsill, cursing my stupidity for leaving it out, and drape it over the pathetic attempt for a radiator, which is currently eking out a pitiful burp of lukewarmth into the room.  Luckily it is summer here.  Come winter – if I am here, or even alive, come winter – it will be too cold to survive.  I pick up a sweater from the floor and tug it over my bare chest.  I pull shoes onto my bare feet, make a vague attempt to rub dirt and grime off my cargo pants, and leave my little hovel.  I walk down two flights of stairs to reach the street.  The stairs reek of come, urine, shit and alcohol.  The smells of destitution.  Too familiar.

I shake myself and walk into the street.  A pitiful streetlight is spitting out a haze of light into the wall of gauzy rain that drifts gently from the sky.  I start walking.

As I walk I can't help but think of the end of the war.  In particular I think of when Andross died.  I remember running into Andross' throne room to deliver the news that the last defences had fallen and that the Cornerians were entering the base, only to find him looked in hand to hand combat with Fox McCloud.  The boy was clearly losing; he was outweighed by Andross and for all his prowess, Andross was the better fighter.  Andross was fighting like a man who knew he was going to die; desperate.  Fox had a fire in his eyes that I had seen in the Venomian Lizards' eyes.  As I watched, mouth agape, Fox lunged at Andross and sunk his teeth into Andross' arm.  The ape howled in pain as Fox bit down with his powerful vulpine jaw, and tore at the soft flesh.  I remember muttering something along the lines of 'Holy mother of fuck' as blood spurted from Andross' arm in almost comic fountains.  

Then the explosions began, tearing into the throne room and setting the drapes on fire.  The door behind me was blocked, Andross was struggling to fight with his life leaking out of his arm, Fox was fighting like a wild creature.  I had never seen anything like it, never would have expected it from the demure boy I had known at the Academy.   I knew he had strength, because it took a strong person not to fall apart when their mother was torn to pieces in a car bomb and his father tortured to death several years later, but this was something else.

And then, as the fires raged, eventually Fox's jagged teeth found Andross' throat and tore it to pieces.  Man and boy went down as one, Andross gargling and trying vainly to injure Fox, Fox falling with him.  And then, what seemed like hours but could only have been seconds later, Fox stood up and looked at me through the flames.

I trip over a pothole and realise I have walked full circle.  I glance up at my current home and then across the road to Katlana's den.  She is always ready for a quick fumble in her crumple sheets, and that is the kind of thing I need right now to distract myself from the look I had seen in Fox's eyes when he looked at me through the flames.  

Helplessness.  Remorse.  And fear.

And I had wanted to wipe that all away and replace it with the smiling, laughing, joking boy I had knew less than two years ago.

I shake myself and walk into Katlana's place.  As I approach her den I wonder if she will be alone.  Sometimes she is, sometimes she isn't.  It doesn't really bother me who's there to watch.  I just need the sensation to make me think of something other than the terrible pain.  Sex can do that, it can make you think that everything's okay even if it's just for those precious minutes.  So I step up to her little tent and nudge the scraps of material aside. 

And my heart trips up and tears itself in two when I see the ragged figure lying at her side.

**Just let me fall.**


	3. Three

Disclaimer:  Same as before, lyrics again by Circe de Soleil.

A/N:  In case you don't read my profile (why should you?) my laptop recently died (fruit squash laptop = bad) and is being repaired, hence this update being slower than promised.  Bear with me because I am restricted to library-opening times, but I will carry this fic on to wherever it may be going- I'm not entirely sure yet.

-

**All I ask, all I need, let me open whichever door I might open**

I am drifting somewhere between dim consciousness and sleep for several hours, with little on my mind.  Then, gradually, I remember what happened. 

I remember who I am and what I have done, and I remember leaving the Great Fox when all the others were asleep and flying my jet down to somewhere on the surface of Katina.  I remember looking back at the swan-like figure of the Great Fox only once as I flee away from it, wondering what would happen to the team.

I was leaving, unable to bear myself in their presence.  Falco was bored already, Slippy had been offered a job from the Cornerian Intelligence Service and Peppy was looking to marry a woman he'd met before the war and raise the children she was expecting.

StarFox would fall apart, no matter what happened to me.  And I didn't care. 

And now I am lying in the den of a lone survivor, and yet despite her presence at my side I feel so alone.  I cannot tell her what I have done or she would react like everyone else did.  With disgust and pity, like I'm some thing to be locked away and observed. 

Only one person ever looked at me with neither of those emotions in his eyes.  Or, should I say, his one remaining eye.

I groggily open my eyes and look around.  Daylight is creeping around the flaps of material of the den, and I can feel a light aching behind my eyes.  Katlana and I are the only ones here, in this deserted place.  That's how it feels anyway.

A part of me wants to stay here with Katlana, to drink and rut in the dark until the days become indistinct and I eventually die.  But another part of me, a presence inside me that I hadn't been aware was there, thinks maybe this isn't the best idea.  But no matter how much I try, I cannot think what I can do.  I don't want to die, not really, and I don't want to live either; yet drifting is too much like death and existing is too much like life.

"Fox," a small voice says, distracting me from my thoughts.  I look down and see Katlana's bloodshot green eyes looking up at me.  "Ve'y pretty," she slurs.  "Love pretty."  I can't think of what to say to her.  "You nice.  Make me feel no lonely."  From the way she stumbles over Cornerian I wonder if it's her first tongue.  "Other men hurt.  On'y one other nice, but cold.  You warm, not cold.  You eyes like his one, though.  Hurting."  She cuddles closer.  "Hold me.  Never let go." 

I can feel an aching for this poor girl, and an urge to smear those tears off her face and make her smile.  I imagine that she has a beautiful smile.

"I'll hold you, Angel."

**Let me fall, if I fall, though the phoenix may or may not rise**

I don't know how long I stared at him, how long I wanted to reach out a brush a lock of that sandy-blonde hair from his closed eyes and wipe the shadows from under his eyes.  But I couldn't.  No matter how many times I ran the image through my mind – doing that, then telling him what I felt about him and him telling me he felt the same and… - no, it would never happen.

And so I turned and left.  And now I am wandering along the road in the early morning sun, having found another girl the previous night, and I find myself passing Katlana's den again.  I hurry past.  I both couldn't bear to see him and long to see him.

As the sun warms up the puddles in the street and the dampness in my clothes and fur, I hear a familiar sound from several blocks away.

The rapid patter-patter of machine gun fire.  Instantly I am alert, against the wall and looking around me for danger; all before I am aware of it.  I can think of only one organisation that would running around at the moment with machine guns: little pockets of Venomian resistance.  Supposedly my allies.

As that thought occurs to me, and coupled with it the idea of joining such organisations and become their leader, another thought comes to me.  An intense loathing of everything they stood for.  And with that…

I fought like them.  I killed like them.  I fought for and killed for the same reason they did.  I am them who I loathe so much. 

I look down at my paws, paws that held weapons, weapons that killed mercilessly, indiscriminately…

Suddenly a movement catches my eye.  Five of the Venomian Resistance soldiers round the corner.  Two of them fire at a woman sitting on the pavement.  She is reduced to a senseless heap of flesh.  Fear stabs at my gut – they are killing anyone and everyone in their path.  And even if they did recognise me they are so filled with hate that they would kill me anyway.

I hoist myself agilely through a nearby glassless window and wait, crouching in the dim of the building for them to pass.  But one shouts- they must have seen me, and it was stupid for me to think they wouldn't follow someone who ran- so I shuffle back and run through the building into the street behind.

More resistance soldiers.  Back into the building, up two flights of stairs and jump across the gap to the next building.  I take my place by a window and watch as four of the resistance soldiers progress along the street- presumable the other has chased me.  But armed with a length of metal I stand a small chance at surprising him. 

And with a lurch of fire to my gut I watch as two resistance soldiers enter Katlana's building.

**I will dance so freely holding on to no one **


	4. Four

Sorry it took so long to update, but I finally sat my ass down and wrote something. As always, lyrics by Circe de Soleil.

-

**Someone I am is waiting for my courage.**

Who am I to question the divine will of God, if such being even exists. Peppy always used to tell me that God didn't so much determine your future – after all, His gift to us for free will – as show you the path. You had to take the path. I took one path, and here I am now. Some cruel twist of fate? I don't know. I'm not sure I care to think of such things, because there's so little that I know. Did God determine what will happen to me in the rest of this day? Did He determine that I would be here on Katina, present at a certain place and time so that certain events would unfold? I don't know. What I do know is the fight. So when I hear the familiar pitter-patter of machine-gun I am instantly alert.

"Shh," Katlana murmurs. "It go. Always go."

But my ears tell me different. I can hear a few screams, and the gunfire comes ever closer. And, after a few more seconds, I can identify the weapon. A Venomian weapon. This is no ordinary gunfight, played out between impoverished people who want only to have something that the other has. I remember hearing reports, before I came to this place, about small factions of surviving Venomians soldiers causing trouble wherever they could. Their preferred method? Shooting defenceless civilians.

I look around me. I don't see the scrawny den, the girl beside me. I see the holster I abandoned when I made myself comfortable in here. I reach over, check my weapon is safe and ready for use. Without thinking. Just acting on an instinct that I've had with me for so long.

I pause for just a moment. I came here because I hated the killing. And here I am, the second I hear more of it, alert and ready to join in. I might laugh from the cruel irony, or maybe I should cry, but I do neither because then I hear footfalls inside the building in which this den was built.

Before I can think about whether to shoot them or to pretend not to be here, they open fire. The next few seconds are a cacophony of noise and Katlana's single scream. I hit the floor the second I heard the first round fire, moving quick enough to avoid any damage more serious than a nicked ear. Katlana moved too slow. I roll over to her, see the stillness of her face and the blood leaking from her mouth, and feel an odd ache inside me.

"I won't forget you," I whisper, kissing her softly on one cheek and closing her dulled eyes.

The Venomians are talking – I had never learnt their language but I could probably guess that they're wondering if they'd got their targets. I wait. Eventually I hear the sound of them turning, and then I roll out from underneath the collapsed den and take them both down. It was unfair to shoot them in the back but it was unfair for them to kill Katlana, so I figure I'm even on the fairness meter.

I walk past the dead bodies, relieving one of them of his machine gun and both of them of their spare magazines. I holster my blaster, make safe the machine gun and grip it in both hands. Any films you see of guys with a machine gun in each hand are a load of bollocks: the recoil would send both guns shooting to the heavens after about three rounds unless the guy's arms were about as thick as my body. Besides, you don't really need two unless you're planning on firing in two directions. And if you're in that kind of situation it probably won't matter if you're shooting at the ceiling because there's a pretty good chance you'd be dead already.

I peer carefully around the corner to see how many men are in the street. Initially I see two. Unfortunately they see me. I duck back as they open fire, and the second they stop I'm shooting at them. We exchange fire a few times, seeming to gain no advantage on either side, until a shot comes out of nowhere and this me in the shoulder. Cussing, I look around me and see another man coming towards me from a different direction. He's left himself open, though, so I drop him easily and turn back to the other two, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. But now those two are joined by another two.

I'm starting to think that maybe I should have played dead earlier rather than shoot the men who had killed Katlana, and then yet another shot comes from apparently nowhere. Ducking down in case it was aimed at me, I initially miss the fact that it's taken down one of the enemy. When I notice this, I peer out, looking for the person who is apparently my ally. I see no one. But the effect on the Venomians is pronounced: they've run for cover.

The mystery shooter makes no more move, and I start looking for another place to move to. Just as I'm about to make a move, one of the Venomians open fire, forcing me back into cover, and then as I look out cautiously I see the familiar shape of a grenade flying towards me.

I've always had incredible reflexes, ever since I was small and the bigger kids thought it'd be funny to throw basketballs at me and I managed to swat them away without a moment's thought. I was shooting that grenade before I even considered the idea. I fire off a quick burst, notice that someone else fired at the grenade too, and then duck away as the combined effort destroys it mid-air.

The blast knocks me back and possibly even knocks me out for a few moments. When I open my eyes I hear the tail-end of a machine-gun exchange, after which I hear footfalls outside approaching where I'm lying. I sit up, machine gun ready in case it's a Venomian wanting to check that I'm dead this time.

Nothing prepared me for the man who walked into the ruined building.

**The one I want, the one I will become, will catch me.**

I don't know what feelings are running through my mind now, only that there are a lot of them and they're all messed up.

Messed up like the kid sitting on the floor in front of me. A battered kid, clasping a machine gun in his arms, staring at me with wide eyes. Hauntingly beautiful eyes that I don't think I could ever forget.

"Hey, stranger," I say. Don't know what else to say. He can't think of anything, that much I can see from the confused look in his eyes. The machine gun is still pointed at me. "Hey, kid, how about you point that thing at someone else." No response. "Look, if I wanted you dead I would've done it while you were sleeping last night." His eyes widened further. "I'm not going to kill you but the Venomians still lurking around might. Between us I think we've got them all, but I think it's time to move." He nodded numbly, but said nothing. I glanced over at the little material den. "Is she…?"

"Yeah."

I nod as well, feeling a slight pang of pain at the thought of that sweet girl dead, and then walk over to Fox and give him a hand up.

"Why?" he says softly.

I don't quite know.

"Not now," I say.

He's able to walk, so we walk side-by-side through the now-deserted streets to the place that I have made my own in this ruined city. I take him upstairs to the small room I have slept in for… oh, I can't count the nights.

"Not much space, I'm afraid," I say as I show him the room. "Bit cold, too."

He sits on the floor, his knees tucked up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs and a closed expression on his face.

I sit on the bed, staring at him, all the things I want to say to him running through my mind in a jumbled mess of feeling.

"Why are you here?"

I look up and see him looking intently at me. It takes my brain a moment or two to register that he's asked me a question.

"Where else am I supposed to go? Venom? Don't wanna see the damned place again. Corneria would string me up soon as they laid eyes on me. This place was nothing by the end. No one looks in nothing."

"Yeah," he says softly.

"What about you? What brought you to this place?"

He scowls and I see a strange look in his eyes, something I can't quite interpret. "I don't belong anywhere," he says softly. "I hadn't stopped growing up when the war started. I went straight from being a kid to fighting a war. I don't know anything else. I don't have anything to do now."

I'm about to say something to the contrary when it hits me that he's telling the truth. When the war's over, when there's nothing of what he's always known, what is he meant to do? Fade away into the abyss, a memory some people might hold, a good memory but from a bad time.

"How old are you?"

"I'm twenty," I say, and just saying that makes me want to laugh. Twenty-year-olds go to university, or they're training to join the army, or they're starting a career somewhere.

"I'm eighteen."

And eighteen-year-olds? They've just finished high school. They've got an entire life ahead of them, still carefree but starting to think that there's more to life than passing tests and hanging at the bagel store.

"Look at us both," I say. "A pair of misfits. What the hell are we meant to do with ourselves?"

Fox just shook his head.

**So let me fall, if I must fall.**

**Let me fall, if I fall.**

**Just let me fall.**

End.

A/N: There may be a sequel, if anyone can give me an idea for where to take this or if something dawns upon me. If not, I leave it to your imagination what happens to Fox and Wolf in this post-war world they're in. There's a war going on children, but only in the heart and mind.


End file.
